package.el should be able to ignore your "out of date" elpa version if
the bundled version is more recent, so it should work even if you don't
uninstall the elpa version.
By ignore, do you mean it won't show up in the list of packages
available to install?
No, I mean it should not be added to load-path during startup.
That may add to the confusion in this case. "I installed ruby-mode 1.1, but
it didn't do anything!", or something.
No, because package.el wouldn't let you install 1.1 when you have 1.2
bundled (at least, not without warning you).
So this would only cause the downloaded package to be suddenly
superseded by the bundled package when you upgrade Emacs, which is The
Right Thing To Do.
Do you think we should bump it to 1.2?
Depends. Is it a fork?
I meant, bump the version of the bundled ruby-mode.
I understand this. But the question still stands: is the bundled
version really a more up-to-date version, or do we have a fork and there
are good reasons why someone would want to use the ELPA version over the
built-in one?
The "ruby-mode 1.1" doesn't contain any substantial changes, AFAICT, so
there's nothing to merge. But it is present in both Marmalade and the
original ELPA.
Sounds like it's not a fork. So we should bump our version accordingly.